engleski

The Communist Past in the Capitalist Present: The Experience of Two Croatian Post-Yugoslav Generations

Many scholars agree with Mannheim's thesis about real social change occurring only when new generations, fully socialized in new regimes, replace the old ones. In the meantime however, the generations who live during this transition cannot just standby waiting for these new societies to form. The generations of youth that are now reaching adulthood and full-fledged membership of postcommunist societies are the ones caught in-between regimes. On the one hand, they may have been born in recent years or after the break-up of communist regimes, and on the other they may have spent either their formative years or their whole lives in a new capitalist regime. For these generations, communism is in the past, and yet it is still recent enough to be bound to the lived experiences of their parents and the majority of people who surround them. In addition, it is embedded in the institutions that surround them. As a result, members of these transitional generations are socialized in the values of their new capitalist societies, but at the same time they still have access to the possibly conflicting or competing values of the previous regime. My research question therefore concerns the ways in which members of these young transitional generations legitimize their experiences of capitalism in light of the available perspectives of the previous communist regime. I examined this question by conducting 72 in-depth interviews with two Croatian post-Yugoslav generations (born 1978-81 and 1989-91). Specifically, I examined what these generations thought was good or bad in the Yugoslav communist/socialist system and how this compares to their lives and expectations within Croatian capitalism.

generations; post-communist; perceptions; capitalism; communism; Yugoslavi

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